


Something Worth Dying For

by lesbianneptune



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: F/F, michiru-centric introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5255708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianneptune/pseuds/lesbianneptune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Haruka, Michiru had found her reason to live and her reason to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Worth Dying For

If you had asked Michiru Kaioh at the tender age of thirteen if she believed in the concept of true love, your only response would be apolite laugh and a cold, mocking look that would instantly remind youof your own absurdity.

For Michiru, love had been something of a fairytale – but not the aspirational kind. Love was more like the pathetic whims of an imaginative child, something which only existed in order to provide happy thoughts for those without the stomach for the coldness of reality. Years of listening to what she could only label as cupid’s propaganda had built a pent up aggression in her early teenage years, a visceral dislike for the way her classmates would giggle and chatter excitedly about boyfriends and dates and romance and things that, in Michiru’s world, could only truly bring loneliness in the end. For years she had carefully studied the patterns of love within her own family and had come to the conclusion that the entire thing was a farce that existed purely in order to keep up appearances. Love was a falseness that was so deeply embedded into society that everybody seemed to believe in it, as though love was something inevitable that would, eventually, hit you whether you wanted it to or not and whisk you away to some far off land of marriage and children and emotional prosperity.

 

Thus, at the age of twenty-four, for Michiru to find herself happily and honestly wed was objectively odd, an outlier in the facts of her case as a human being. She was a Kaioh, complete with the trademark icy exterior that emerged as a by-product of being alone as the supposed pinnacle of humanity. Love contradicted all that she stood for. If anything, it was a weakness, that which would disturb the deft control of emotions she had been taught all her life, lessons which had been passed down through her family line for generations.

And yet, it was a love more intense than anything she had ever thought to be within the realms of possibility that had seared through her and left its irremovable mark.

Michiru knew that love wasn’t power. She knew that it was the absence of such. To dedicate oneself to another was akin to breaking a hole in the shield that divided her from the rest of them, to reach a hand through and grasp warmth where it had never been before.

 

But Michiru also knew that it was this warmth that kept her alive, albeit a warmth that reduced the value of her own life to zero in comparison with Haruka’s. Love added as much as it took, a dedication that ruined her whilst lifting her to places she had never known she would be able to reach, emotions she had never prepared herself to feel, a dent in the faultless image they had carved so beautifully for her. The superlatives of her previous life, the impeccable sounds of her violin, the inarguable grace of her gait, the silky tones of after-dinner conversation faded into nothingness in Haruka’s shadow. Haruka’s life and, as an extension of this - though by no means a necessity for the guarantee of Michiru’s lifelong devotion - Haruka’s love was worth every pure note she’d ever played, every diamond she’d ever worn, every place upon the history books that was permanantly scarred with a name she had grown to hate.

 

Marriage didn’t prove this, of course, and for Michiru it wasn’t altogether something that even mattered to her, the fuss and formality of such an occasion little more than a stark reminder of the life she had tried so hard to reject. But when Haruka had gotten down on one knee, stammering about her own inadequacy and Michiru’s incomparable flawlessness, Michiru had instantly decided that nothing would make her happier than to be Haruka’s wife. Her happiness was not the dozens of roses, or the applause of their new, improved, utterly chaotic senshi family (their blood relatives, of course, had been denied any involvement in the occasion, a dismissal that had brought Michiru just as much pleasure as it had brought Haruka guilt) or even the dress that Setsuna had so carefully and thoughtfully made for the occasion. The wonder and glamour and expense of the gathering had little impact at all on Michiru’s psyche, on the upturned corners of her mouth or the gentleness beating through her heart.

 

Rather, happiness was Haruka’s smile as she turned to see her beloved walk down the aisle, the way her eyes glazed over and her mouth dropped open slightly, ever the picture of naive imperfection. She was so purely and unapologetically obsessed with Michiru, although - and this was something Michiru would never quite be able to convey to her - she would never be able to match Michiru’s own obsession with her, a vicious need that had taken root within an errorless body and slowly chipped away at the layers of a glacial heart.

 

Happiness was the way Haruka’s palms were dampened with nervous sweat, the way her hands shook slightly as Michiru cradled them. Happiness was the way she fidgeted as she stammered her vows, the way tears sprang to the corners of sparkling eyes as Michiru articulated hers. People would often claim Michiru to be beautiful, but in her eyes she was nothing more than a marble trophy, to be sat upon a mantelpiece and polished and refined when neccessary. In her eyes, Haruka was the living, breathing epitome of beauty, a beating heart that could not and would not be hidden beneath any amount of skin or bone. Her emotions, those core, human feelings which Michiru had hidden for as long as she could remember, painted her face with vunerablity and honesty and, more often than not, love – a picture which no portrait could ever replicate.

Happiness was the way she playfully danced with Hotaru and later, after far too much to drink, Minako, and the way her laughter carried through the hall, the unashamed sound of carefree contentment that Michiru would die to protect. Happiness was Haruka whispering in Michiru’s ear as they held each other, the soft kisses on her neck and ears (and, oh, Haruka’s lips had always been so soft for one that wished to appear so rough, as though they were revealing the malleable soul that lay within). Happiness was the gentleness with which she regarded the children, the pride in her voice as she thanked Mina for her speech, the way she choked on her words as she tried to express the overwhelming labyrinth of impassioned thoughts that flushed her cheeks pink, a reminder, to Michiru at least, of the abundancy of her joy, the pure elation that excised all other reasoning.

 

And so, as they said their vows, and swore that they would not part until death, Michiru knew innately that that death would be her own. She would become Haruka’s second skin, destroy all that Michiru Kaioh had once been, reduce herself to little more than a shield if needs be – because, for all she would sacrifice for Haruka, the existence of such a need had resulted in more humanity, more reality, more purity than Michiru had ever, ever expected to run through her tainted veins.

 

In Haruka, Michiru had found her reason to live and her reason to die. And she knew, as Haruka carried her over the threshold of their bedroom, into the promised clutches of a new life together, that there was no way she would ever go back.


End file.
